


Youth

by thefriendyouleftinthehallway



Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Did I Mention Murder, Elemental Magic, Gen, Murder, Out of Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21593590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefriendyouleftinthehallway/pseuds/thefriendyouleftinthehallway
Summary: “What’d you do to the nerd?” An AU fic where for vague reasons, the ultimate truth is that Felix, Jake and Sam murdered Andy in the bush, and instead of trying to search for him while hiding the real magical cause of his disappearance (as is canon), the three boys are attempting to cover up the murder they committed together (as is AU).
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Youth

**Author's Note:**

> Man, this show is for kids. For one thing, Australian Year 10s (and I can attest to this) swear a lot more than in this PG-rated tween-aimed teen drama. You’ll notice me asserting this knowledge right off the bat. 
> 
> OOC as hell though, man.

“Fuck,” Felix breathed, and the sentiment was echoed by the two other boys in the silence, broken otherwise only by their heavy breathing, and the general bush-sounds of a river in the distance, warbling magpies, and the grating caws of cockatoos. 

Sam was streaked with mud, some red, some brown. He was crouched behind the corpse, looking down at it as he slowly lifted his hands from where they had been pinning Andy’s struggling arms down. 

Jake too made slow movements, loosening his grasp on Andy’s now-stilled ankles. He blinked slowly as he moved his hands away, looked down at his bruised knuckles and thought of how they matched the half-formed marks on Andy’s body from where he’d knocked him down. 

“Fuck,” Felix muttered again, dropping the knife from his blood-slicked hands as they shook. 

Collectively the boys took a step away from the corpse. There was blood on Sam’s forehead, on Felix’s hands, on Jake’s cheek. 

“So… what now?” Jake asked quietly. 

“We hide the body,” Felix answered hardly. The bush seemed to take a breath around them as the words escaped the goth-boy’s mouth. 

“How?” Jake asked. 

Felix brushed off the question as they both turned towards the third boy. 

Sam blinked slowly, took a stumbling step back and lifted trembling hands to his face, watching them shiver. He appeared to swallow, and his breaths began to speed up. Felix shifted towards him and made to place a bloodied hand on his shoulder, but remembered the vermilion liquid and pulled his hand back again. 

“Felix,” Jake urged, deciding that Sam’s turmoil was not the priority. “How do we hide the body?”

“Magic,” Felix stated distractedly, and suddenly, his hands burst into flame. The blood crackled and burned, and when the fire shortly subsided, Felix was brushing ash off of his otherwise clean hands. Looking to Jake again, he spoke. “We can break it down into its element.”

“Wh— what does that mean?” Sam asked. His voice was shaking slightly and he looked as though he might be sick. He spoke, for once in his life, softly; like he was afraid. But his eyes were fixed, not on a monster advancing, but upon his own shaking hands. 

“We can turn it into water,” Felix said. “Nobody cares about puddles. They’ll be looking for a corpse.”

“But we need a water element,” Jake reminded abruptly. 

Felix looked down at Andy’s body. “We’ve got one,” he said. “He’s right here.”

“But—” Sam started. 

“Nobody said he had to be alive,” Felix interrupted, and as he looked up, he smiled at the other two. It had the look of a smile that was intended to be reassuring, but it didn’t have such an affect; it looked cold and dead, like something behind the face it was painted on had snapped and gone wrong. 

~~~

When they did it, it was the dead of night. All of them joined in on the spell, none of them sure at which point either of the others had joined in on Felix’s rhyming chant. A large clear crystal, attached to a string like a necklace, glowed as the chanting continued, and Andy slowly but surely melted like ice, water flowing into the earth beneath him. 

Felix lifted the crystal, which glowed slightly in the darkness, and gave Sam and Jake a clear view of the object before slipping it over his neck like the talisman. “This is our new water element,” he said. 

There was a beat of silence, and Jake shook his head and ran his hands over his face. 

“What?” Felix asked him. 

“Nothing,” Jake said, and shifted. “I was gonna make a joke. It was a dumb idea.”

“What joke?” Felix asked. 

Jake leveled his gaze with the crystal, and said quickly, “Hey Andy.”

There was a tense silence. 

“Dumb idea,” Jake reiterated. “ _ Really  _ not funny. Sorry, guys.”

~~~

“He’s onto us,” Jake said quietly as the boys banded together again. 

The interrogations had been intense, but thankfully they previously rehearsed their stories. Only, Roland — who apparently was a detective in this universe — had asked some questions that their scripts didn’t answer. 

Which was a problem. Because even with Andy’s body nothing more than water in the soil in the middle of the bush and a crystal around Felix’s neck, it didn’t change the fact that Jake, Sam and Felix had played a part in the premeditated (albeit poorly) murder — and subsequential cover-up of said murder — of missing person Andrew Lau. And now there was a detective who was convinced that they’d done  _ something _ . 

Even if there wasn’t a body to be found, Felix himself had never managed to get all the blood out from under his nails, and all three of them were living with a guilty conscience, Sam most of all. The poor little skater-boy seemed ready to burst with it all. 

It was all they had left to simply trust that an unstable Sam, now attending questionable mandatory psychotherapy sessions to boot, wouldn’t simply burst under the strain and spill the jellybeans. 

“What’s he fucking gonna do?” Felix spat quietly to Jake and Sam. “Arrest us for watering public eucalypts?” 

Jake and Sam laughed, but it was strained. It was fake, and all of them knew it. Their happiness, their nonchalance. It was all fake, but that was okay, because all of them were doing the same thing, and all of them knew it. 

~~~

These days, for Felix, creating a ball of fire was too volatile. As soon as he tried, it always quickly got out of hand, growing beyond a practical size, spitting angry sparks and attempting its best shot at setting fire to everything around him. 

Fire he could manage was the kind that clung to his skin. It stung although it left no burns, and it crawled over his hands, up his arms. The sting was pleasant. And then he’d turn the fire off, and the sting would disappear, leaving behind nothing but pale, untarnished flesh, and he’d feel empty. 

These days, Sam was taking some pretty hard prescription meds to avoid daily panic attacks. Sometimes they happened anyway, when the school bell beeped and he’d forget for a split second about Andy, and then the light would bounce off the crystal around Felix’s neck and the feeling would clash with the sound of loud highschool chatter and everything would all of a sudden be so stiflingly overwhelming that he could barely breathe and his chest twisted and he was on the ground. 

Often a strong breeze would cause the doors in the corridor to slam and the wind would whip against the building furiously, carrying books right out of students' hands, whenever Sam had an episode. And the other two boys would be at his side in a flash, offering comfort. He wasn’t so sure, given what they’d done together, if this was a comfort at all. But at least it  _ felt  _ comforting. 

These days, Jake thinks the ground beneath his feet is always trembling, even ever so slightly. Like its ready to open up and swallow him. 

His powers are too grand for a person who can barely keep them in check, and he worries that some day he’ll think too hard and feel too much, and the whole planet will split down the middle. It’s better with the other boys around. They help him stay sane. They also caused this in the first place. Sometimes he has to be alone. And it’s at those times when he feels safest. It’s also at those times when he feels that the world is in danger from him. 

And if thunderstorms happen right above the gum trees where Andy got ‘hidden’, well, that doesn’t mean a thing at all. 

If Felix knows his magic has never been stronger since they killed Andy, if he thinks it might be worth it to find another sacrifice just to increase his and the other boys power, that doesn’t mean a thing at all. 

If Jake sometimes wonders if him and Felix should kill Sam, simply because the boy is a liability, that doesn’t mean a thing at all. 

If Sam thinks that it might not be all that hard to kill somebody again, because once you’ve committed one murder, you know what to expect, that doesn’t mean a thing at all.

They’re fine. They’re going to be fine. And if everything doesn’t work out, maybe they can all just flip, and use their powers to assume supreme control of the world. But that doesn’t mean a thing. At all. 


End file.
